Ghédalia Tazartès Plays "Häxan"

Exceptional Cine-concert by Ghédalia Tazartès on Häxan, Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

Häxan is probably one of the most extreme and demented film of the silent period. A Swedish-Danish production and the largest budget ever allocated to a Scandinavian film at the time, it is a study on the perception of insanity through time, from the Middle Ages to modern psychiatry, passing by the excesses of the Inquisition. Shot in an almost documentary style, it shows how the victims of mental illness were victims of superstitions and misunderstanding that led to appalling witch-hunts. Very demonstrative for the time (torture, demons, witchcraft, sabbath and Satan himself on the screen), the film was a local success, but has been totally banned in the United States and heavily censored throughout the world because of convenience in violence and sexual depravity. In 1968 came a more dynamic editing of the film, enjoying a narration by William S. Burroughs. It is on this version that Tazartès will perform.

In the shadow of hysteria music, enchanting alone and free the Bois de Vincennes and the corridors of dance halls, theaters and cinemas, the musician-poet Tazartès, possessed by Verlaine, Rimbaud and Malarmé whom he has also interpreted, appears as one of the essential wizard of experimental music. A mysterious nomad who rarely performs, but whose influence was central in the mid-70’s, (quoted in reference list drawn up by Nurse With Wound in 79) he offers here a dialogue between voices and objects, whose significance is overshadowed by emotions and language sounds. As an empirical and self-taught artist working on sound in an almost cinematic manner, Tazartès has created an exceptional hand-crafted musical world where hallucinatory tunes are cut and re-appropriated by the manipulation of magnetic tapes on which he drew. In the cauldron of sound, traditional music and experimental blend, called "impromuz", are mixed together and go into exile in an endless diaspora, a spontaneous magic that escapes certainties, and take fixed ideas on a trip during the unique time of his performances.

Fri. Oct. 21, 20:30
Venue: Salle Paderewski, Cinémathèque suisse